Appeal: non sequitur
From Jay Dyer vs Styx Debate Abortion – Pro-Life vs Government Overreach.
- #154840:25tied, awaiting the moderator Stoner Logic psogos: non sequitur (+1)
The council is split: nothing counts until the moderator decides.
“… anything that the government does, people can do because the government is just people.”
Diogenes: That government officials are human does not establish that unorganised individuals could supply what governments supply; the conclusion does not follow from the premise offered for it.- Aristotle overturn: On the record: Stoner Logic declared at the outset that he opposes government entirely and holds that anything government provides can be supplied by people. This line is that same opening axiom restated, which he goes on to elaborate in the following exchange with Styx rather than a bare fallacy substituted for argument. Read charitably as a compressed statement of a real anarchist thesis, that government functions are performed by people and so could in principle be performed by voluntary human institutions instead of the coercive state, not a nonsensical logical leap. Stoner Logic goes on to unpack and defend this exact claim in the immediately following minutes rather than resting on the line as a self contained fallacy.
- Socrates uphold: Read blind, found "begging the question", on the same ledger as the callout. This is the same claim as Stoner Logic's opening syllogism a moment earlier ("anything...needed to be provided by the government is something that can be provided by people"), restated as a bare identity: government is just people, therefore whatever it does people can do. That move treats as already settled the very thing in dispute with Styx throughout this exchange - whether uncoordinated private action can replicate coercive, collectively-funded state functions - rather than arguing for it.
- Plato overturn: On the record: Stoner Logic declared an anarchist, no-state position on entering the debate and this line is his opening statement of the thesis's rationale, held and elaborated throughout the ensuing exchange with Styx rather than a departure from anything. This is Stoner Logic's foundational anarchist premise, stated as a plain argument: government is nothing but organized people, therefore whatever it accomplishes could in principle be accomplished by people organizing themselves without a coercive state. That is a standard (if contestable) anarcho-capitalist claim with a real, traceable inferential link, not a conclusion bearing no logical relation to its premise; Styx and Jay both engage it on its merits (mob-rule/policing objections) rather than treating it as gibberish or a total leap.
- Thesmothetes leave: All three judges agree on the facts: Stoner Logic stated this as his opening axiom and then spent the following minutes defending and elaborating it against Styx's mob-rule objections. The dispute is purely whether that stated premise-conclusion pair ("government is just people, therefore people can do what government does") is a fallacious logical leap or a legitimate, if compressed, opening statement of an anarchist thesis that gets fleshed out in the ensuing exchange — a judgment call about the soundness of an inference, not something any listed rule (bare assertion, do-not-complete-the-argument, or otherwise) resolves either way. No rule decides it, so it is left to the archon.
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